Monday, June 05, 2006

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna. He has published another essay today related to this one (at Brussels Journal): Is the Nation State Obsolete?

I know many Americans, and Europeans, too, have more or less written off Western Europe as lost to Islam already. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think this too sometimes, but I do see encouraging signs of a real shift of public opinion beneath the surface. Judging from information such as the extremely high number of Germans hostile to Islam, I still believe, or at least hope, that Europe can be saved. But this hope hinges on the complete and utter destruction of the European Union.

The EU must die, or Europe will die. It’s that simple.

Bat Ye’or in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis is right in pointing out that ordinary Europeans have never voted for this merger with the Islamic world through massive Muslim immigration and Multiculturalism. This is closely tied to the rise of the European Union, which has transferred power away from the people and the democratic process to behind-the-scenes deals made by corrupt, Eurabian officials and bureaucrats. Several observers have noted that there is a serious disconnect between the European elites and ordinary citizens. This has been made possible largely because of the EU.

I have heard the term “neo-Feudalism” being used of the EU. There are definitely certain elite groups in Europe who have never really accepted the loss of power to “the mob,” and think that everything that’s wrong with Europe is because of “populism,” what others call democracy. These are also the people who created Eurabia and “forgot” to consult the public about these plans. The EU should be viewed that way, as a de facto, slow-motion abolition of European democracy, disguised as something else. The real force behind the EU is to cede national sovereignty to a new ruling class of bureaucrats, a new aristocracy and a throwback to the pre-democratic age.

I’m really worried about a complete collapse of the democratic system here. It has already been weakened by the EU, the UN etc. for a long time, and now we also have direct physical threats by Muslims to freedom of speech. Ordinary Europeans are no longer in control of our own fates. Sweden has for instance in reality ceased being a democratic country, in my view. We need to recapture this, or Europe is finished.

In an interview with Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal in February 2006, former Soviet Dissident Vladimir Bukovksy warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union, an EUSSR as some people call it. In a speech he delivered in Brussels, Belgium, Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fully-fledged totalitarian state.

“I am referring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans”, whatever that means. According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.”

Bukovksy replied negatively to Belien’s question whether the member countries of the EU didn’t join the union voluntarily, and that the integration thus reflects the democratic will of Europeans. “No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.”

In 1992, Bukovksy had unprecedented access to Politburo and other Soviet secret documents. According to him, some of these documents “show very clearly” that the idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was encouraged in agreements between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home” “Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. I am not saying that it has a Gulag.”

“The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats – threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals.” From 1985 onwards, “the Soviets came to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.”

In January 1989, during a meeting between Gorbachev, former Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, American banker Rockefeller and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Giscard d’Estaing is supposed to have stated that: “Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Eastern European countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared.” As Vladimir Bukovksy points out, this was 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. “How the hell did Giscard d’Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? It does smell of conspiracy, doesn’t it?”

Yes, it does smell of conspiracy. This was in the 1980s, when most of the media still dismissed talk of a political union to subdue the nation states as scaremongering. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French President and chief drafter of the awful EU Constitution, an impenetrable brick of a book of hundreds of pages without any of the checks and balances of the American Constitution, has argued that the rejection of the Constitution in the French and Dutch referendums in 2005 “was a mistake which will have to be corrected.” “The Constitution will have to be given its second chance.” He said the French people voted No out of an “error of judgement” and “ignorance”, and insisted that “In the end, the text will be adopted.” “It was a mistake to use the referendum process, but when you make a mistake you can correct it.” Mr Giscard d’Estaing indicated that the treaty could be put to French voters in a second referendum, or be ratified by the French parliament. “People have the right to change their opinion. The people might consider they made a mistake,” he said on a possible new referendum. Anybody who still questions whether Eurabia, the deliberate merger between Europe and the Arab-Islamic world described by Bat Ye’or, is “just a conspiracy theory” should read these statements by Giscard d’Estaing. Why should we be surprised if leading EU officials make behind-the-scenes agreements that affect the future of the entire continent, yet say nothing about this in public or flat out lie about their agenda? This is how the EU has been working for decades, indeed from the very beginning.

From its inception, European integration has been a French-led enterprise. The fact that the French political elite still want to maintain their leadership over Europe was amply demonstrated during the Iraq war. President Chirac famously said in 2003 after Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic backed the US position “They missed a good opportunity to shut up,” adding “These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position.” Jean Monnet, French economist who was never elected to public office, is regarded by many as the architect of European integration. Monnet was a well-connected pragmatist who worked behind the scenes towards the gradual creation of European unity. Richard North, publisher of the blog EU Referendum and co-author of the book The Great Deception: Can the European Union Survive? together with Christopher Booker, describes how Jean Monnet for years, at least from the 1920s, had dreamed of building a “United States of Europe.” Although what Monnet really had in mind was the creation of a European entity with all the attributes of a state, an “anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so that it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty.” In their analysis of the EU’s history, the authors claim that the EU was not born out of WW2, as many people seem to think. It had been planned at least a generation before that.

The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, widely presented as the beginning of the efforts towards a European Union and commemorated in “Europe Day,” contains phrases which state that it is “a first step in the federation of Europe”, and that “this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation”. As critics of the EU have noted, these political objectives are usually omitted when the Declaration is referred to, and most people do not even know of their existence. A federation is of course a State and “yet for decades now the champions of EC/EU integration have been swearing blind that they have no knowledge of any such plans. EEC/EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: flag, anthem, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, laws.” The EU founders “were careful only to show their citizens the benign features of their project. It had been designed to be implemented incrementally, as an ongoing process, so that no single phase of the project would arouse sufficient opposition as to stop or derail it.” Booker and North calls the European Union “a slow-motion coup d’état: the most spectacular coup d’état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so in public.

In 2005, an unprecedented joint declaration by the leaders of all British political groups in Brussels called for PM Tony Blair to push for an end the “medieval” practice of European legislation being decided behind closed doors. Critics claim that the Council of Ministers, the EU’s supreme law-making body, which decides two thirds of all Britain’s laws (and the majority of laws in all Western European countries), “is the only legislature outside the Communist dictatorships of North Korea and Cuba to pass laws in secret.” As one of the signers put it: “We still have this medieval way of making decisions in the EU; people hide behind other member states, and blame them. It increases people’s sense of cynicism, but what we need is some straight talking.” According to British Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, this is how the EU was designed. “Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval. So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion.” “Indeed, the EU’s structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic.”

Vladimir Bukovksy, too, warns that it looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. “Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone.” “Today’s situation is really grim. Major political parties have been completely taken in by the new EU project. None of them really opposes it. They have become very corrupt. Who is going to defend our freedoms?” He doesn’t have much faith in institutions such as the elected, but largely powerless European Parliament, to curtail these developments. “The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous.” “It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo,” which was the real centre of power in the USSR, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all.

Another former citizen of the USSR, Vilius Brazenas, has noted some of these similarities between EU and Soviet institutions, too. “When former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev visited Britain in 2000, he accurately described the European Union as “the new European Soviet.” He said this with obvious approval, since he sees the evolving EU as fulfilling his vision of a “common European home” stretching “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” as he described it in his 1987 book Perestroika. Mr. Gorbachev is a lifelong Communist.” “It is highly significant that a top-level Marxist-Leninist such as Mikhail Gorbachev could find such affinity with Western leaders about a “common European home” and then, 13 years later, approvingly note that that common home was moving ever closer to the Soviet model.” “Booker and North write that Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, known in Europe as “Mr. Socialist,” was responsible for convincing his fellow EU founding fathers that “the most effective way to disguise their project’s political purpose was to conceal it behind a pretense that it was concerned only with economic co-operation, based on dismantling trade barriers: a ‘common market.’”

Meanwhile, the vast and inflated EU bureaucracy puts its tentacles into regulating every conceivable subject in Europe in great detail, not just the percentage of fat in yoghurt. Beer drinkers in Germany were frothing at the mouth during the summer of 2005 over EU plans to make Bavarian barmaids cover up. The aim of the proposed EU directive was to protect them from the sun’s harmful rays. But the so-called “tan ban” was condemned as absurd by breweries, politicians — and the barmaids. It was eventually withdrawn. In Sweden, most clothes sold in shops contain labels with washing instructions. But the labels were viewed at the EU level as a hindrance to free trade, as it was prejudicial to foreign clothes sold in Sweden that don’t have the labels. A poll commissioned by the Swedish Consumer Agency showed that eight out of ten Swedes read the washing instructions before they wash new clothes, and six out of ten read them before they buy clothes.

These are examples of the more ridiculous or funny aspects of the EU machinery. But there is also a much more sinister side to it: The promotion of an official, “Eurabian” federal ideology promoting Multiculturalism, denouncing all those wanting to preserve their democracy at the nation state level as “xenophobes” and those wanting to limit Third World immigration as “racists.” A report from the EU’s racism watchdog said Europe must do more to combat racism and “Islamophobia.” New anti-discrimination laws to combat Islamophobia are to be enacted, as they already have been in Norway, where Norwegians need to mount proof of their own innocence if Muslim immigrants accuse them of discrimination in any form, including discriminatory speech. The EU also wants to promote an official lexicon shunning offensive and culturally insensitive terms such as “Islamic terrorism.”

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, after the ripples caused in early 2006 by the Muhammad cartoons published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, travelled to the Middle East and made joint statements with Islamic leaders that “freedom of the press entails responsibility and discretion and should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions.” Solana said that he had discussed means to ensure that “religious symbols can be protected”. Such steps could materialize through various mechanisms, “and maybe inside the new human rights commission created in the UN”, he said. He held talks with Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al Azhar University, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. In a meeting with the leader of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Solana said that “I expressed our sincere regret that religious feelings have been hurt”, vowing “to reach out… to make sure that people’s hearts and minds are not hurt again.” Dutch daily De Telegraaf quoted the Dutch state secretary for European Affairs Atzo Nicolai as characterising the appeasing tone used by Mr Solana as “shocking.” Only a few years earlier, Mr. Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, in a speech stated that “the root cause of conflicts in Europe and beyond can be traced directly to the absence of democracy and openness. The absence of the pressure valve of democratic discourse can lead these societies to explode into violence.” The irony that he himself later was trying to curtail the democratic discourse in Europe through the promotion of Islamic censorship and speech codes apparently did not strike him.

Journalist Nidra Poller, commenting on the debate prior to the EU Constitution referendum in France, noted other incidents of this deliberate, submissive attitude among EU leaders towards Muslim demands. “The Euro-Mediterranean “Dialogue” is a masterpiece of abject surrender. The European Union functions therein as an intermediate stage of an ominous Eurabian project that calls for a meltdown of European culture and its recasting in a monumental paradise of cultural relativism… that closely resembles the Muslim oumma. Isn’t this a more accurate vision of what the Union is preparing for its docile citizens? When subversive appeasement hides behind the veil of “Dialogue,” what unspeakable ambitions might be dissembled by the noble word “Constitution”?”

Intelligent people have been warning against this development for years. British philosopher Roger Scruton, in books such a The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat and England and the Need for Nations, warns that: “We in Europe stand at a turning point in our history. Our parliaments and legal systems still have territorial sovereignty. They still correspond to historical patterns of settlement that have enabled the French, the Germans, the Spaniards, the British and the Italians to say ‘we’ and to know whom they mean by it. The opportunity remains to recuperate the legislative powers and the executive procedures that formed the nation states of Europe. At the same time, the process has been set in motion that would expropriate the remaining sovereignty of our parliaments and courts, that would annihilate the boundaries between our jurisdictions, that would dissolve the nationalities of Europe in a historically meaningless collectivity, united neither by language, nor by religion, nor by customs, nor by inherited sovereignty and law.” “The case against the nation state has not been properly made, and the case for the transnational alternative has not been made at all. I believe therefore that we are on the brink of decisions that could prove disastrous for Europe and for the world, and that we have only a few years in which to take stock of our inheritance and to reassume it.”

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an admirer of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, has said that the EU enlargement with ten new member states, mostly former Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, “increased the EU’s democratic deficit.” He warned that “The EU has continued – at an accelerated speed – to expand the number of pages of its legislation which now deals with almost every aspect of human life and human activities.” Mr Klaus also stressed that the nation-state “is an unsubstitutable guarantor of democracy (opposite to all kinds of ‘Reichs,’ empires and conglomerates of states).”

According to Vladimir Bukovksy, “the most likely outcome is that there will be an economic collapse in Europe, which in due time is bound to happen with this growth of expenses and taxes. The inability to create a competitive environment, the overregulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse.” “I have no doubt about it. There will be a collapse of the European Union pretty much like the Soviet Union collapsed. But do not forget that when these things collapse they leave such devastation that it takes a generation to recover. Just think what will happen if it comes to an economic crisis. The recrimination between nations will be huge. It might come to blows. Look to the huge number of immigrants from Third World countries now living in Europe. This was promoted by the European Union. What will happen with them if there is an economic collapse? We will probably have, like in the Soviet Union at the end, so much ethnic strife that the mind boggles.” “I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.”

Richard North writes that “If, against all the odds, the Constitution does go ahead, it would be like locking down the lid on a pressure cooker and sealing off the safety valve. The break-up might take a little longer, but it will be explosive when it comes.” In the book he co-authored with Christopher Booker, the authors conclude: “Behind the lofty ideals of supranationalism in short, evoking an image of Commissoners sitting like Plato’s Guardians, guiding the affairs of Europe on some rarefied plane far above the petty egotisms and rivalries of mere nation states, the project Monnet had set on its way was a vast, ramshackle, self-deluding monster: partly suffocating in its own bureaucracy; partly a corrupt racket, providing endless opportunities for individuals and collectives to outwit and exploit their fellow men; partly a mighty engine for promoting the national interests of those countries who knew how to ‘work the system’, among whom the Irish and the Spanish had done better than most, but of whom France was the unrivalled master. The one thing above all the project could never be, because by definition it had never been intended to be, was in the remotest sense democratic.” They believe this is why the EU is doomed and why it will “leave a terrible devastation behind it, a wasteland from which it would take many years for the peoples of Europe to emerge.”

I understand concerns that the destruction of the EU could cause “instability” in Europe. It will. But we will probably end up with some “instability” anyway, given the number of Muslims here that the EUrabians have helped in. Besides, if “stability” means a steady course towards Eurabia, I’ll take some instability any day. I can’t see that we have any choice. The truth is that Europe has got itself into a bad fix, again, and will have some turbulent and painful years and decades ahead regardless of what we do at this point. The choice is between some pain where Europe prevails and pain where Europe simply ceases to exist as a Western, cultural entity.

Some would hope that we could “reform” the EU, keep the “positive” aspects of it and not “throw out the baby with the bath water.” I beg to differ. I was naïve, too, once, and thought there were positive aspects to the EU. There aren’t, or not nearly enough to keep any of it.

The EU is all bath water, no baby.

Which is why, as Bukovksy says, “the sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas.”

The creation of Eurabia is the greatest act of treason in the history of Western civilization for two thousand years, since the age of Brutus and Judas. In Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Brutus and Judas Iscariot were placed in the harshest section of Hell, even below Muhammad. If Dante were alive today, he’d probably make some room for Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and his Eurabian cronies in the Hot Place. The EU elites see themselves as Julius Caesar or Octavian, but end up being Brutus. They want to recreate the Roman Empire on both sides of the Mediterranean, bound together by some vague references to a “shared Greek heritage.” Instead, they are creating a civilizational breakdown across much of Western Europe as the barbarians are overrunning the continent. The EU wants to recreate the Roman Empire and ends up creating the second fall of Rome.

Eurabia can only be derailed by destroying the organization that created it in the first place: The European Union.

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comments:

How do you expect this overthrow of the EU to be accomplished, when they basically have total control over the military, the media, the arts, the universities and the lower schools? When they can (despite all their hypocritical screaming about Abu Ghraib and Haditha) probably use methods of espionage, intimidation, and even torture far beyond any American Administration could ever dream of using?

And if despite all this, some group manages to defeat all these obstacles and get rid of the EU, is it not likely to be another anti-Democratic group such as fascists or even neo-Nazis? A group dedicated to defeating the EU has to be pretty committed (i.e. - radical) in its own way to withstand the hardships of taking on such a totalitarian machine.

I don't exactly see your average center-left European as being up to the task.

Democracy only works when the citizens are strong enough to rule themselves. Europe has very few strong citizens left. Socialism saps the strength from the people leaving them incapable of living without the socialist state.

It looks like the EU is trying to acquire a critical mass of muslim immigrants to prevent the native population of Europe from re-seizing control over their own lives.

Somehow the Keltoi come to mind. Once so strong that they spanned Europe and sacked Rome itself, its sad remnants today hang on in Hibernia and the fringes of England and Brittany. I suspect the Europeans are heading for demise too, and will go silently lest they be accused of "racism" for daring to mention their own extinction.

This is a very good article which confirms what I have known in broader terms for many years. Gorbachev always referred warmly to his idea of a "common European home" which I always understood to mean his vision of the EU as part of the Soviet Union.

The deliberate dismantling of the Berlin Wall was part of that strategy. It was actually a non-violent (at first) invasion of West Germany by the East.

As a consequence Germany has been effectively neutered as a buffer between Eastern and Western Europe--a goal specifically sought by the Soviet Union since NATO began. All the while ignorant U.S. politicians have declared themselves the winner and gone home. You have to admire the offensive's simple beauty. And the enemy (us in this case) becomes complicit in keeping it secret, for after all, what politician wants to admit that we didn't really win the cold war?

All U.S. politicians including those who want to believe Ronald Reagan "won" the Cold War, need to learn this lesson. It is NEVER that easy.

al fin, re It looks like the EU is trying to acquire a critical mass of muslim immigrants to prevent the native population of Europe from re-seizing control over their own lives.

In order to rule, an unpopular regime needs a "thug class" to keep the population under control. The necessary attributes of the thug-class include:

- a propensity for violence. The primary necessary attribute of the thug class is that they be willing to commit violence in order to keep the general population in line

- a general inability/disinclination from conventional work.

- a complete alienation of the thugs from the general population. It's necessary for the thugs to not have divided loyalty, to not feel any sympathy or kinship towards the people they will be called upon to stomp

- some flaw that would prevent them from seizing power away from the ruling class. they must be manipulatable

In Europe, the immigrant Muslims may be prime candidates for the thug class

The European Union has simply replaced the bilateral treaties of the past with multilateral treaties. It is designed to interlock nation states so as to make borders of secondary importance and permit high level delegated interference in each national state which would be impossible without war on a bilateral basis.

In doing so it has moved away from the world of the Versailles Conference of 1919 and its avowal of Self-Determination of peoples and back to the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the objectives of countries like Russia and Austria-Hungary in making a World Safe FROM Democracy

Chirac is toast with 17% support and Germany is paying 19% VAT from 2007 and losing jobs to the east subsidised with EU funds. Hartz IV is to be cut further to Hartz V.

It is hard to have your unemployment pay cut, your sales taxes increased, and your jobs moved to cheaper areas of Poland, just so you can pay the EU to store French wine and featherbed Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal

In Central Europe the Communists controlled a big military machine and Secret Police - it still crumbled in 1989

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but destroying the EU isn't that hard. I'm tempted to say : It will destroy itself. The military is no problem - just like everything the EUrocrats touch it will fail miserably. Those EUrocrats can't organize a trip to the john without getting lost or hammer a nail into a cowslip without destroying both.

From my point of view (Denmark) I see people all over Europe waking up and protest. We just can't take it anymore. Today's poll here shows that 69% of Danes demand a referendum if the politicians just carry on with the EU 'Constitution'. Actually, I hope they do : Any further talk about Turkey joining and the EU rigmarole is history....

"The case against the nation state has not been properly made, and the case for the transnational alternative has not been made at all."

The case against the nation state is not one that can be reasoned against. It is a strange and noxious brew of transnational idealism and global interaction made second-nature by 21st-century technology. A reasoned defense of the desirability of the nation-state model doesn't stand a chance against a deep-seated or even institutionalized belief in the evilness of that model and/or the righteousness of One World United(TM), or against a perception that changing times and advancing technology have rendered that model obsolete.

When reasoned debate is not an option, it comes down to which side is most willing, able and prepared to fight for its position by any means necessary. So far in Europe, it's been a rout for the anti-nation-staters. Given European gun-control laws and policies (presumably meant for precisely this sort of scenario), unless Europe's various police and military forces join an anti-EU revolt (or at least decline to protect Brussels from a popular uprising) I don't see the tide turning in the foreseeable future.

Though there are efforts to create both : if there are no borders and criminals travel freely, how can local police cope? Of course borderlessness makes both EU internal police and external border guards necessary. (Think the murder of 2nd generation asian immigrant Jeshma Raithatha by a Latvian habitual criminal in the UK for an example of the first, and Spains and Italies boat people problems for the second). How can the EU have a strong common foreign policy if it cannot be enforced? Of course that demands muscle! EU army please.

Those are the real unacceptable red lines - common police that no longer answers to national powers and an army that pledges loyalty to Brussels first.

I never trusted the idea of a "United Europe" for various undefined reasons, but one thing struck me as I was researching WWII propaganda re: the post war world. I came across some wartime advertisements from American companies saying how they were now focusing on the war, but wonderful things awaited the American consumer after the fighting. I wondered if the Germans did the same thing.

I found a few examples from German companies such as the German Ford dealers talking about the next generation of vehicles coming for the new Reich. I also read a piece by Goebbels talking about how the European Economic Community was going to operate post Axis victory. The European Economic Community, or the EEC, the forerunner to the EU! It seems that nothing has changed in Europe. So what's the difference in the EEC/EU being run by Hitler or a French/German combine? Nothing. Now I understand what a sinister idea the EU is.

When this false construct collapses, will Americans be required to send our best again to save Europe from its self murder? I know of many in the blogosphere who shout No! Me? I'm too old to go, but will my children be forced to sacrifice for Europe? I hope nothing like this happens, however, with the lack of border controls in Europe and the arrogance shown by the EU "leaders" it appears something violent may be on the horizon.

I think Voyager pretty much nails it. The ECSC began as French effort to control Germany and it worked fine for several decades.

DeGaulle vetoed British membership to prevent too much Anglo-Saxon influence and had the EC remained just the 'core group' it might haveworked. But not now. Its expansion has alienated the French from it and Germany can no longer finance the endeavor.

The EU has reached too far and its greatest achievement, the Euro, instead of being the symbol of unity has underscored the problems of too much integration of what are still local economies. German officials speak gloomily of the costs of the Euro. Italians too are made slaves to its rigidities.It puts one in mind William Jennings Bryants famous 'Cross of Gold" speech.

No, I think time is running out on the EU project. That is not to say that all will wither away rather it will simply revert to what it was originally sold as a Common Market.

Boy oh boy do you folks have very important problem to deal with. As a first off, from an American perspective any constitution more than a few pages is a scam. The US constitution is three pages, later ammended, while yours is 800+ and growing. Just who is doing what to whom for what purpose here? Second off knowing your Euro-elits from my perspective they are playing a nasty game by using the Islamos as a foil to the peasants. It boils down to this, if you don't like the way I design your life you will end up dealing with the Islamonazis or buckling under to my thinking into how you should agree with me as to how I desire you to live your life according to my enlightened view.Karensky

"Sweden has for instance in reality ceased being a democratic country, in my view."

Soft vs. Hard totalitarianismsUSSR/ PRC were/are hard totalitarianisms - people living inside all know that the entire system is built on lies and work around it - but overthrowing the system is very hard and bloody

In a soft totalitarian system - majority of people living do not know because of media control/manufacturing consent ;) - but once there is awareness overthrowing the system is not so difficult

Example gedanken - if you meet 100 Swedes outside Sweden today and 100 Russians from the Soviet Union (assuming it was still around) - how many of the Swedes agree that they are living in a system built on lies/ and how many of the Soviet visitors would agree that their system is a totalitarian system? - I bet you that most of the Russians would agree right away and most of the Swedes would argue back saying you are paranoid/extremist/blah/blah

We face the exact same problem in India, the most difficult problem in a soft Totalitarian system is convincing people that they are living in a system where the elites/dacha dwellers have hijacked the system and are controlling the media to prevent the truth from being outed. This system has continued for decades - sorry to be pessimistic but EU will continue much longer because they will make sure that they do not lose media control. The other way would be economic collapse _followed_ by EU collapse. The only way I can see is to regain control of the media.

Ik: Maybe I'm engaged in wishful thinking and being too optimistic, but I think the internal problems of the EU are now so big that this alone could make the whole thing crumble. Economists have warned in public that the Euro could collapse within a decade. Besides, almost 70% of the people in the Netherlands, one of the founding members of the EU, are against the awful Constitution. Yes, I know, the elites will ignore it, but it shows that the old brainwashing trick isn't working quite as well as it used to. You can fool people for some time, but you can't fool everybody all of the time. People see that Multiculturalism isn't working, despite the propaganda. Notice, too, the number of Germans who dislike Islam. The welfare state system in several countries, notably France and Sweden, is now so weighed down by Muslim immigrants that it, too, could collapse within a decade.

The short version is: The problems are now becoming too big to hide. The EU and our national Multicultural elites thus have the choice between shifting from soft totalitarianism to hard totalitarianism or watch the whole thing will crumble. Maybe it will crumble anyway.

By the way: May I have your permission to "borrow" some of your comment for a later essay about the revenge of Marxism after the Cold War?

What have y'all been smoking? EU collapse? We're just about to jack up the euro zone interest rate another 0.25% or 0.5% - I boarded a plane in Stuttgart the other day to find the business class section stretching half way down the fuselage - not exactly a harbinger of recession.

As for the whole Islam thing - yes, we've had a couple of riots, a few bombings. Big deal - compared with, say, road safety, this is a small problem. The muslims I know are busy coding java or giving aneasthetics, and go to mosques where the sermon is about as exciting as the average christian equivalent. This whole Chicken Little bit is just like the 19th century fuss over Irish emigration to the UK - funny Catholic belief system, big families, a slight tendency to plant the odd bomb. Fast forward a century, and the Irish are doctors, banks, developers, cabinet members.

Look, if you think the situation is so dire, why not visit? See where porches get born, in Stuttgart. Do the parapente in the Alps. Have a beer in a real Irish pub. Go for a stroll in the City of London.And stop worrying.

This is so funny I might actually forward it to some Italian friends. Have you any idea how much red tape they have tied themselves in? Unbelievable! No you don't, because you've not lived there - which I have. Thanks to the EU, I didn't need to worry about visas, and my company didn't need to worry about tedious export controls.

Italy is still Italy: it is just a lot easier for us to visit each other and work together.

Phibius, try starting your own business some time, then you'll find out just how the EU is slowly destroying the countries that are its members. An economy is driven by small businesses, not large ones, and the amount of red tape generated by the EU is driving thousands of small companies out of business.

All the so-called benefits of the EU can be achieved with a simple free trade zone abd bilateral treaties. We don't need the toy parliament or the comissions, we don't need the councils of europe, we don't need europol or the european defence agency, nor the cap, nor gallileo, nor the Euro. We don't need any of those just to pop across the channel and buy some wine, or get on a plane to visit italy. All that needs is a trade agreement, which is the exact opposite of the EU.

Phibus: Yes, I believe it is fully possible that the EU will fall apart during the coming decade. I certainly hope that will be the case, but I do think it can happen, yes.

Phibus: As for the whole Islam thing - yes, we've had a couple of riots, a few bombings. Big deal - compared with, say, road safety, this is a small problem. This whole Chicken Little bit is just like the 19th century fuss over Irish emigration to the UK

To compare the rapid Islamization of Europe, the largest change this continent has experienced in a thousand years, with the Irish is so ridiculous that I find it hard to take seriously. And - finally - tens of milions of Europeans now seem to agree with me:

In spite of official attempts to promote dialog among religions, distrust of Islam continues to grow, with 60 percent of Germans expecting tension between traditional German society and immigrants from Muslim countries, according to an Allensbach study commissioned by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

Out of dream for empire, the states of Europe abandoned their money, their heritage, their language, and their money. It is no small irony that they accuse the United States of doing what they themselves are doing! The old desires for empire have led to a new class of slaves and masters, and the press whitewashes the events in service of puerile anti-Americanism. The only hope for Europe lies in those countries who have recently experienced oppression and love their freedom more than federated slavery.

The stupid thing is: if only there was a federal state! Then at least we could - in theory - have something like American federalism. The present EU is working more towards a one-size-fits-all (a sort of Kingdom of Europa). Add to that Flemming Rose's argument about the historically grown cultural identities (as opposed to the political one in the US), and you have a disaster in the making.

If I imagine that the Euro partly floats in Middle East oil and the Eurabia perspective is a the otherpart of an agreement made by the European elite, I could as well imagine that the American presencein the Middle East might preventthings in my naive imagination tocome to reality....when the Euro show it self not to be any civil weapon against globalization or against instability and certainly is not suited to serve all the nations at the same time.

OK.

Perhaps even if you do not like my profession or you have got so used to think in your own humaniora-way you will have to preserve honest international trade (in more than a theoretical way):

This means we have to have a newinternational monetary system to take the place of the old one that broke down in August 1971:

Gold? - Oh no, please take good care, take very good care, indeed!

Another proposal:http://lilliput-information.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-monetary-system.html

If I again imagine that the international competition remainseven though reality outdo ideologysomething has to be done:

From Ideology to reality -or an example of International Competition and Welfare without Ideology:

I have not maintained that European-Arabic Dialog from the 1970s describes what might come into the relation between EU and the Arabic world.

I actually recognize an euro that have to float in oil, and euro in the end just with limited administrative ruling. The so-called hard euro was abolished about 1995, and first of all, it is not wanted by the European elite.

is understood if there is a payment the other way too. That is generally politics in lager relations.This payment the other way has been described in Danish in:http://danmark.wordpress.com/2006/06/05/usa-arabien-eu-i-dilemma/

If it cried out too loud and you supplement with your phantasy and belief of this and that, our mostsevere opponents will get a long needed help to their arguments, and they should not, but you need to know.The shouting out will hit least 75 p.c. wrong. Geopolicy often have 3-4 contributory factors. That is the reason why you do not read in the mainstream media about this part of the agreement in either Europe or USA.

That the European leaders managed to secure the course of the eurowhile they also secured mass-unemployment, colossal stat-debt and continuing decits without any perspective of any major changes reorganization or renewal for the European have to find an explanation.

I don't know if I imagine an axis EU-Arabia and another axis USA-Europe.

The Muslims will ruin Europe as they did Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. They will make everything according to the Koran. They will make Christians second class citizens.

How do I know? I am a Copt who has been forced out of Egypt because of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The European Union is a bunch of Liberal people who want to throw away their whole heritage. They must put a ceiling on how many Muslims enter the nation. Otherwise the European race will be wiped out like the Coptic race almost was and Muslims will rule Europe.

I don't know how but something must be done. The people of Europe clearly don't have a say in what is going on. They are blind to the truth and their backs are to the people of European descent.

God desiganted Europe for the land of Japheth. Europeans should rule Europe not Muslims. That is why those betrayed brave Christian Europeans stood on the hills of Tours and Poitiers to beat back the Muslim invaders.